Research on successful interactions with DV victims shows that:

• nonjudgmental listening,
• validation, and
• labeling the abuse as abuse helps the most.

Placing blame for the abuse on the victim is to be crucially avoided.

In interviewing patients regarding domestic violence, a funneling technique that puts open-ended questions first has proven effective. Asking patients to talk about their intimate relationships offers them an opportunity to prioritize their issues. Asking detailed yes/no questions later in the interview will extract information needed to determine a pattern to the cycle of violence.

Victims vary in their readiness for change and interviews can identify the stage a particular woman is in.

• In the first stage, a woman experiences shame, self-disgust, and denial about her situation. At this time, a nurse’s simple validation of the woman’s dignity and rights may plant the seed of changing awareness.
• In the next stage, a woman accepts the fact that she is being abused and that it is not something she can control. At this point, the nurse may facilitate the victim’s access to resources she chooses to explore.
• Women already in the later stages of action, possibly using legal and counseling services, may still have relapsing incidents of DV. These women are becoming aware of the relationship pattern they are caught in and can benefit from discussion of their risk factors and the strategies they have tried.
  

As we have mentioned, victims of DV are conditioned from the abuse they have received. As a result, they often distrust cooperative relationships, including nurse-patient cooperative relationships. Nurses can learn how to circumvent these problematic survival traits. Two possible approaches are to:

1. seek mutual agreement regarding goals, and
2. ask what potential problems the patient sees with regard to them.

Also, the nurse may reassure the patient that it is possible to have strong feelings and still think practically. Nurses can teach DV patients to stay out of denial by keeping a private journal and reviewing it sporadically over months or years.

The CDC's Reproductive Health Information Source has an excellent slide show entitled The Intimate Partner Violence During Pregnancy: A Guide for Clinicians that can be easily downloaded at this site and viewed from your computer.

If for some reason you don't want to download it, you can view the slides, and actually read the associated lecture notes associated with each one at this link.

Please access the slide show and look for the answer to this question:

What factors about pregnancy make it considered to be a "window of opportunity" for positive interventions regarding domestic violence?